Hebrews 1:10-11 “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands; they will perish… and they will grow old like a garment…”

With the high temperatures lately in Kansas City, we all are very thankful for air conditioning. But I had a problem – it wasn’t working. Although the outside unit was running, the air inside the house was warm, and the air coming out of the unit outside was cold. Things were backwards! That means the Second Law of Thermodynamics wasn’t in operation, since hot air (the wasted energy from a working system) should be exiting the outside unit. It turned out to be a bad circuit board. Once replaced, my AC system worked!

We explained last week how engineers harnessed the power of the Laws of Thermodynamics to create air conditioning. Using the AC system as our model for the universe, we proved with the First Law that the Theory of Evolution (which claims that life began from nonliving chemicals until eventually morphing into people) is false. Let’s again use our AC system to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and give our second proof for why Evolution is false (be aware: your children are taught in school that it is a fact).

The Second Law says “Since the total energy in a closed system is constant (by the First Law), the amount of energy available to the system to do useful work is always decreasing.” As any system performs work (like the AC system cooling your home), the Second Law tells us there will be some amount of wasted energy that is lost to the system as heat, unavailable to it to do work. This was my problem with my AC system – it wasn’t blowing hot air, so I knew it was broken, This heat, or lost energy, is called “entropy”.

All systems, living (like you and me) or nonliving (like AC) are under this law. All systems have their entropy increase while their available energy decreases. Over time, all systems move from higher to lower levels of usefulness (from order to disorder), eventually reaching equilibrium (complete randomness) and unavailability for further work. Entropy increases. That’s why it’s called a law. Everything breaks down.

There are no exceptions to the Second Law. Everything in the universe is moving towards decay, not towards self-organization and complexity (as evolution would have you believe). The only way a system can maintain its organization is if it is an open system (something or someone is adding energy from the outside to counteract the effect of entropy).

So, AC engineers must deal with the uncompromising truth of the Second Law. To restate our point last week, starting with electricity to run the compressor, they know that not all that electricity will be used by the system to create cool air – some will end up as wasted heat – entropy. So they are always searching to improve their design to use the maximum amount of the electrical energy they put into the system and minimize the amount of wasted heat. This is what it means when people talk about an AC unit’s “efficiency” – the more the energy coming out of a system to do work matches the energy put into the system to get it to do that work, the more efficient is the system. But there is no such thing as a 100% efficient system. That’s because the Second Law does not allow it. And that’s exactly what our verse this week from the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us. The entire universe, initially created from nothing by God, is growing old like a garment and breaking down. Just like you and I are growing older and will break down.

Now, back to why this disproves Evolution. Last week we explained that anyone who claims there is no God must explain where the matter and energy in the universe came from. We said there are only three possibilities: 1) matter popped into existence out of nothing (spontaneous generation), 2) matter always existed (i.e., eternal), or 3) matter was created. We proved last week, by the First Law, that possibility #1 is impossible. So now, let’s look at possibility #2 (matter always existed – it’s eternal).

To think the universe has always existed means to ignore the fact that there is a finite amount of usable energy left. Since useable energy exists but is being depleted everyday by the Second Law, and we know energy isn’t being created to replace it, then the universe can’t be eternal! An eternal universe would be equivalent to an AC system that was 100% efficient! Such a system would convert 100% of the electricity put in to run the compressor into cold air in your house, with zero heat lost to the outside. Impossible!

That leaves us with possibility #3, that matter was created. Since the Second Law, like the First Law we examined last week, has no exceptions, our universe is an open system, brought into existence by an immaterial Force outside of it. That Force is explained in Hebrews 1:10-11. Again, like last week, we discover it’s the God of the Bible. That’s scientific – that’s logical – and again, that’s reality

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance”, Article #254